Need to add area code to all local contacts' phone numbers

paste the following into AppleScript Editor. it's located in /Applications/Utilities. change 555 in the script to your area code.
<pre style="
font-family: Monaco, 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;
font-size: 10px;
margin: 0px;
padding: 5px;
border: 1px solid #000000;
width: 720px;
color: #000000;
background-color: #ADD8E6;
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title="this text can be pasted into the Script Editor">
tell application "Address Book"
set mlist to selection
repeat with eachPerson in mlist
repeat with eachNumber in phones of eachPerson
set theNum to (get value of eachNumber)

set value of eachNumber to "555" & theNum

end repeat
end repeat
save
end tell
</pre>


select the contacts in your phone book whose numbers you want to change and press run in Script Editor. this will add 555 to the front of all phone numbers of all selected people

Open up the Applescript Editor and paste in this script

property myAreaCode : "(505) "
tell application "Address Book"
 repeat with aPerson in people
 set thePhones to phones of aPerson
 if thePhones is not {} then
 set errorList to {}
 repeat with aPhoneNumber in thePhones
 set theNumber to value of aPhoneNumber
 if length of (theNumber) is less than 10 then
 
 try
 set value of aPhoneNumber to myAreaCode & value of aPhoneNumber
 on error
 copy name of aPerson to end of errorList
 end try
 end if
 end repeat
 if errorList is not {} then
 display dialog errorList
 end if
 end if
 end repeat
 save
end tell

Change the myAreaCode property to reflect your area code and the format you want (the part inside the quotes). E.g. if you want to use dashes as separators, put "505-" inside the quotes.
You may also want to verify if "less than 10" will find all of your phone numbers. Remember that the phone number is a text string, so 123-4567 is eight characters, not seven. I chose 10 to account for using a US number with area code and no punctuation (e.g. 5051234567).

I also couldn't verify if my error tracking would work as I couldn't generate a failure to test it. So, if you do have errors, you may get an error when it tries to display the list of unchanged numbers.

I would like to change the area code in a batch too, but I need first to remove a 0 at the beginning of each number. How should I change your code to do that??

For example, this number:

020 1234567

should become:

+31 20 123456

If you want to change all the start with a 0, then this will work

property myAreaCode : "+31 "
tell application "Address Book"
 repeat with aPerson in people
 set thePhones to phones of aPerson
 if thePhones is not {} then
 set errorList to {}
 repeat with aPhoneNumber in thePhones
 set theNumber to value of aPhoneNumber
 if theNumber begins with "0" then
 
 try
 set value of aPhoneNumber to myAreaCode & (characters 2 thru (number of characters of theNumber) of theNumber)
 on error
 copy name of aPerson to end of errorList
 end try
 end if
 end repeat
 if errorList is not {} then
 display dialog errorList
 end if
 end if
 end repeat
 save
end tell

How do I add a number "1" before all my US contacts' phone numbers? I could probably use this same script and just replace the area code with "1", right? I'm sorry for my newbiness, but I tried opening applescript editor, and I don't know where to go from there.

Any help is appreciated.

Thanks
Corbin

There are a lot of problems with that. If you have only US phone numbers, it is simpler. If you have numbers from other countries, then this is my best guess at getting them changed. It first checks to see if there is a US address. If it does, it then checks to see if there are 10 numbers. If that is ok, it adds the 1. However, it won't catch those without an address.

tell application "Address Book"
 set errorList to {}
 repeat with aPerson in people
 set USAddress to false
 repeat with anAddress in addresses of aPerson
 if country code of anAddress is "us" then set USAddress to true
 end repeat
 if USAddress is true then
 set thePhones to phones of aPerson
 if thePhones is not {} then
 repeat with aPhoneNumber in thePhones
 set theNumber to value of aPhoneNumber
 if length of theNumber is 10 then
 
 try
 set value of aPhoneNumber to 1 & theNumber
 on error
 copy name of aPerson to end of errorList
 end try
 end if
 end repeat
 end if
 end if
 end repeat
 if errorList is not {} then
 display dialog "Change failed for " & errorList
 end if
 save
end tell

I did limited testing on this, but it seemed to work. Before running it, you should export your addresses to an Address Book Archive (File Menu). If you need to recover them, you just have to double-click the address book archive.

Barney's script is better than mine as it automatically skips numbers that have area codes already and does some error checking so use his script instead.